


IT Chapter 2 - Side B

by tossertozier (rednoseredhair)



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, M/M, Murder, Rituals, SO, SO ALL OF THE THINGS YOU ASSOCIATE WITH CANON, SORT OF? we'll get there, it's just the movie I would have written for the general market so still like, just bad times all around!!, lame, like canonical version, only read this if you're down for that, sooo, this is a retelling of IT Chapter 2, very similar just different
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21857218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednoseredhair/pseuds/tossertozier
Summary: Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths.Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Relationships: (unrequited basically), Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Audra Phillips, Bill Denbrough/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon/Original Female Character(s), THESE ARE THE STRAIGHTEST TAGS I'VE EVER WRITTEN WANNA PUUUUKE, ew - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	IT Chapter 2 - Side B

For all Mike Hanlon does for the small town of Derry, Maine, he should be everyone’s favorite person in town.

But Mike learned, twenty six years and nine months ago, that things are not always as they should be.

He couldn’t neglect the hope that they could be though, and that is why he does all of the little things he does, like bring in the milk order for the deli woman whose son had gone off to college twelve years prior to never return, and leave the sports section of the daily paper on the bus bench for the old woodworker named Gary to read on his commute to work. It’s why he ignores the looks he gets, smiles when Gary doesn’t thank him, and whistles to wash out the sound of the mutters about his family being gone.

It’s why he visits the same diner every day to eat a breakfast he could easily make at home. 

The waitress, the host, the everything but the cook at this hour, Anne, looks up from her coffee machine and her smile sparkles at Mike. She has big hoops in her ears and her dark brown messy waves piled atop her head, and he’s grateful for her smile coaxing one out of him. Feeling like it’s pulled straight from his heart.

It’s the only reason he visits the same diner every day.

“Good morning, Mister Hanlon,” she greets, an accent that sang a sweet tune that echoed the sounds of Boston just barely around the edges.

“Good morning, Miss Anne,” he replies, the same way he does every day. He sits at her counter, setting his worn messenger back on the floor by the foot of his stool. “How many times do I have to ask you to call me Mike?”

“How many times do I have to ask you to call me Annie?” She smirks, scribbling out a ticket Mike know is for him to the cook. She grabs at the hips of her daughter, perched on the counter, feet dangling just a few inches shy of the stool. “How many times, munchkin?”

“Bunches!” Her daughter giggles her reply. Laurey is a bit small for her age, knees always managing to be covered in bandages, her hair tied back in plaits. 

“Bunches??” Mike replies with mock-aghast. 

“ _Anne_ , I’m _still_ waiting on that coffe-

“And it’s coming,” Anne whips her head in the direction of the guy with the smoke and the sausages who always sat at the end of the counter, “you want a weak cuppa, or what?”

“No.”  
  
“Then let’s practice a bit of patience, shall we?” She looks down at Mike, winking privately when the man grumbled and returned to his phone. “Sheesh.” She mutters, grabbing a cup for Mike and setting it in front of him. 

“ _Sheesh_ , Mama.” Laurey copies cutely, nose wrinkling when her mom turns a concerned look in her direction.

“Don’t go around repeatin’ that.” Anne flicks her elbow playfully. The coffee maker’s light flickers on, and Anne hastily grabs it, and she’s down the counter with it towards the man before he can holler again. “Tell Mr. Hanlon what you’re gonna do at school today.” She instructs.

Laurey’s face quickly sours. “Mike.” She whispers in a way that is not any less quiet than her speaking voice would be, but Mike understands the effect.

He shifts closer to her, setting his hands on the counter by her knobby knees. “Yeah??” He whispers back.

“I do not want to go to school today.” She whispers. “Where are you going, can I come with you?” Mike looks past the little girl. Her mom is frowning a step behind her. Mike blinks at her, waving her with her eyes away. He was a kid once. He knows about keeping secrets from Mom. Anne wrinkles her nose, but busied herself polishing silverware a few paces away.

“Why don’t you want to go to school today?”

“They’re handing out the end of the year books with our pictures in them.” Mike waits for her to elaborate. He finds these things are normally just a matter of waiting them out. “I’m scared the girls are going to write mean things under my picture.” She mutters quietly as she can. Anne is watching them with a frown on her face.

“Why would they do that?” Mike asks. Laurey frowns at him like he should know, and she points to her eye. A large red port-wine stain covers a portion of her cheek and above her brow. He frowns and tsks. “They shouldn’t do that, Laurey.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean they’re not gonna.” 

“That doesn’t mean we don’t go to school,” Anne, unable to keep herself away from the conversation a moment longer, steps in. She fills Mike’s cup with coffee. Mike knows her shaking hands are from exhaustion, after working all night. “Right, Mr. Hanlon?” She fixes him with a steely look that would chill anyone’s bones, even on a face as pretty as hers.

“Right, Ms. Anne.” 

“You’re gonna keep your chin up, because anything nasty they have to say doesn’t matter to nobody.” She adjusts Laurey’s chin for her, while simultaneously handing Mike some milk. 

“But Ma-”

“But nothing.” The doorbell chimes with a table of middle schoolers. They seem almost familiar, how they tumble all over each other to clamber into a booth. Anne straightens her back. “Brave face on, right kiddo?”

Laurey deflates. “Right, Mama.” Anne puts one on of her own, flipping open her little book of tickets, and making her way over to the kids. Mike turns to watch her go, but Laurey got a grip on his thumb before he could turn. He looks back at her, and her eyes are wide. Just like her Mom’s. “But what if I’m not, Mr. Mike?”

“What if you’re not what, Laurey?”  
  
“Brave.” 

“You are.” He tells her succinctly.

“But I’m not.”  
  
“You are if you say you are. Can you say you are?” Mike feels his heart rate pick up any time he hears anyone mention fear. The word itself sends echoes to his heart, of the time he heard it below ground, 27 years back-

“I don’t know.” She cowers, chin tucked in.

“Then I want you to find a mirror, and look in it, and tell yourself how brave you are. Over and over. Until it’s true. And then, guess what?”  
  
“What?”

“No one can take that from you.” Nothing, Mike’s mind reminded him. He didn’t tell Laurey that. Her eyes tell Mike she doesn’t quite get it. It’s okay. He doesn’t want her to ever get it. He doesn’t want her to ever need to fully understand what he’s talking about. There’s only one thing he needs her to know. “You’re brave.”

“I’m... brave.” She parrots, as she does have a real talent for.

Mike grins at her shy smile, and the next thing he knows, Anne is setting down eggs and wheat toast in front of him with a brilliant smile of her own, and he nearly shouts “tell me again, Laurey!!” Which has the girl in a fit of giggles.

The shift picks up, having Anne flying around the early breakfast rush, joined by a number of other gals in blue dresses. Mike keeps to himself as Laurey launches into a long story about her school play for Ruth, an older, portly woman with smudged lipstick but a nice smile, who works the counter as Anne tends to the booths. 

Mike can’t keep himself from highlighting, and then unhighlighting, and then rehighlighting one name in his contact information.

Bill Denbrough. 

_Swear it._

_Swear… if IT isn’t dead… if IT ever comes back._

_We’ll come back, too._

“MISTER HANLON.” He jumps at her voice. His legs had taken out to the curb, to his car. Anne is waving him down from the door, wiping her hands off on her little white apron. “You’ve forgotten something.”

She waves around a crisp bill, trotting over to him. He left 26.50 on a 6.50 bill. He didn’t forget anything. “I didn’t forget anything.” He tells her honestly.

“Mike…” she exhales.

“Come on now, Annie.” He leans on his car. “You know those kids aren’t gonna tip you. Someone’s gotta keep Laurey in those light up sketchers she was telling Ruth all about.”

“You heard about those, huh?”  
  
“All about ‘em.” He unlocks his passenger door, tossing his bag in carefully to the passenger seat. She watches him do it. “You’ve got tables, don’t you?” 

She frowns at him, watches him unlock his own door, and slide in. He rolls down the window to wish her farewell. “You can’t keep doing this, Mr. Hanlon,” she says with a sigh, rolling up the bill and pocketing it in her chest pocket.

“Driving?” He asks. She leans into his car, resting her forearms on the window sill.

“Treating me and my little girl like this and not taking me on a date.”  
  
Mike’s brain flatlines.

“It’s downright disrespectful, is what it is.” 

“I. Uhm.”  
  
“Yeah. You. Uhm. She pats the side of his car before extracting herself. “I’ll see you at the carnival tonight?”

“It’s not a carnival. It’s a fa-

“Fair.” She finishes with him, with an exasperated but good natured smile. “Yeah, I heard you the first four thousand times. It’s still a carnival, but okay, Mr. Hanlon. It’s a fair.” Mike had started calling it a Fair instead of a Carnival when he became the lead organizer for the middle school fundraiser six years back. It felt… safer. Perhaps it was all a placebo, but fairs had fun. 

Carnivals had clowns. 

“You’re coming?” He asks her.

“Yes, well, I swore I would. To the PTA and the munchkin.” She tilts her head over her shoulder towards the diner. Mike’s head jumps up at her wording. 

_Swear it._

“And that’s important to you?” He asks earnestly. He leans over the seat to see her clearer. “Making a swear like that… a promise?”  
  
“Yeah.” She answers cleanly, but suspiciously, eyebrow threatening to raise at any moment.

“What if you made a promise, like, say, a really, _really_ long time ago. Would you… would it still matter to you?”  
  
“I suppose it depends on what. But I guess so.” Mike doesn’t feel placated by that. He thinks she can sense that. He thinks he can tell these things about others very easily. “Your word’s your word, Mike. Sometimes it’s all you have.”

“Yeah.” He says quietly, distantly. 

_We’ll come back, too_ , echoes in the back of his mind.

“And my word says I get to fight the popcorn machine for the third year running,” she holds up a victorious fist. She punches the tension that’s risen between them right out of the air. Mike exhales, and realizes how strange he must sound. He tries to match her joking energy.

“My hero.”

“Well, I sure hope I’m somebodies,” she winks before turning her back on him. Another family whizzes past, and he knows they’ll soon be her table. He calls out to her anyway.  
  
“Ms. Anne?” 

“Yeas?”  
  
“Remind Laurey that’s she’s not afraid. Of anything.” Anne’s puzzled expression sends him scrambling. “For me. Please.”  
  
She’s slow to reply, but eventually drawls “you’re strange, Mr. Hanlon.” 

“I. Uhm.”  
  
“It’s okay,” she smiles as she opens the door, “I like you that way.” 

The annual fair was a bigger and bigger endeavor to Mike every year, but never before had it felt more high stakes to Mike. He can barely keep his head on straight, running from one loud demand of his name to the next. The cotton candy machine is down and then it’s that they can’t find the hooks for some of the prizes and then they’re out of ketchup and he is running from one activity to the next until one thing makes his feet trip one themself.

“Mike??” The teenage girl by his side demands as he nearly collides into her. 

A few paces away, a young man takes a long inhale from an inhaler. Mike watches the back of his neatly combed head, nearly expecting him to turn around and cry out “ _Shut the fuck UP, Richie_!!!” He turns. He isn’t Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Are you okay?” The girl prompts him. The man is joined by another, an arm looped over his shoulder and a sweet kiss placed on his forehead. 

“Of course, I-” he looks back at the two. They’re giggling over a brazen beaver I <3 Derry hat, and then, sharing a kiss. “Yes.” He looks away, unsure why he looked so long to begin with. “I’m sorry, Sarah, what were you telling me?”

When he looks up, he catches the eye of a teenage boy. He was looking beyond Mike a moment before, eyes set on the two men a few paces away. The boy’s eyes aren’t just cold, and they aren’t dispassionate. They’re angry. Something like a chill runs through Mike.

“Fucking faggots,” the angry boy nods to the rest of the men surrounding his table.

But it isn’t an unseasonable chill in May, Mike knows what it is, he just can’t put the name on it. He can’t give the power to the feeling. Mike stands as Sarah rambles to him about whatever it is she’s talking about, maybe the prizes or the tickets, but he can’t soak in any of it. He can’t do anything but flounder in his own emotion he can’t name.

But he knows it well.

Mike thinks he might know fear better than anyone.

“I’m sorry, Sarah.” He turns back. The two men are gone. “I just,” he turns the other way. So is the boy and his group. “I have to go.”

“But, Mike, the raffle is about to-”  
  
He turns and he power walks away from her. He can see the men getting to the edge of the fair. They’re strolling leisurely. There’s a group behind them, keeping their distance, but muttering amongst themselves. He knows this feeling. He knows it so well. But Mike is caught up in a crowd, trying to avoid pushing past them. “Excuse me, I’m sorry, please, pardo-” 

“MR. MIKE!!” He hears Laurey’s voice, and tiny hands grabbing at his jeans. He looks up. They’re out of the Fair. The men hold hands as they stroll down the bridge. “I GOT MY PICTURE BOOK-”

“Hey, hey!” Anne grabs her daughter, hoisting her up around her waist. “There’s the man of the nig- you okay, Hanlon? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Mike looks from them, to the bridge. The group has surrounded those two guys. How have they moved so fast? It seems supernatural. It seems… other-worldly. 

“I’m sorry, I have to...” He manuevers past them, out of the bounds of the fair, stumbling over cables and cords.

In the distance, someone throws a punch.

“SHIT.” Mike mutters, and then he starts sprinting.

It’s not fast enough. There are two men on the ground and the others surround them. The attack looks violent. Mike is cursing to himself, but his legs will not move quickly enough. He’s too far, too far for them to see him, but he yells at them anyway. “HEY!! STOP!!!” He screams, sprinting towards the bridge as quickly as he can muster. 

“SHIT,” he hears a voice too young to be caught up in anything like this yell, “GUYS-” Mike realizes they’ve spotted him. He stops, stumbling over his feet, realizing he didn’t have a plan for running in there.

“No,” he mutters in horror.

He sprints again, as the guys hoist the man up, over the side of the bridge, “NO NO NO NO-” he screams with another, and he sees the man fall over the side of the bridge. He watches the man collide with the water painfully. The others sprint away, leaving one screaming desolately over the side. 

Mike can’t afford another mistake. He runs down to the shore of the river, ankles cracking painfully on the shakey rocks. The river isn’t lit at all. He can see the with the residual light of the bridge and the fair as he runs down the river, chasing the screaming voice and the thrashing in the water. 

“SWIM TO ME,” He yells at the river, feeling helpless and lost in the dark.

Afraid.

“I’M RIGHT HERE,” he screams louder. He pulls out his phone, using what meager light it’s flashlight will offer to shine on the river. He sees the other man has made it to the other shore, and only then can he hear his voice over the rushing rapids. He hears him call the name of the other man, Adrien. Mike can see next to nothing in the lowlight, only the distant, shadow-y figures.

There are three of them.

A man screams, blood-curdling and guttural. It crashes into Mike, sending him flying back against the rocks of the shore, tears stinging in his eyes, heart pounding in his chest. 

Two hours later, the phone only rings twice before a crisp voice answers.

“Uris residence, Stanley speaking. How can I help you?”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm ! so ! creatively ! stifled ! and i'm choosing to blame that i didn't really like this movie so i'm rewriting it . starting with changing that little girls name from vicky to laurey bc i truley do whatever tf i want. no offense to any vicky's out there. ANYWAYSSSSS HERE WE GOOOO


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